Stalin statue blown up in Ukraine

[cowcommander]

Source: Straits Times

KIEV - EXTREMISTS blew up a controversial monument to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin on New Year's night in southeastern Ukraine in an 'act of terror', the local Communist Party said on Saturday. The bust in the city of Zaporizhia, unveiled this May, caused a heated controversy in Ukraine which is still split between its nationalist west and the more Russian orientated east which fondly remembers the Soviet past.

'A criminal broke into the grounds of the Communist Party regional headquarters, and laid an explosive charge which detonated after a few minutes,' the Communist Party said. 'The statue of Stalin was destroyed as a result of the blast,' the Communists said in a statement. It said that the explosion inflicted serious damage on the building but there were no casualties.

'We consider this to be an act of terror and a challenge from extreme right-wing forces,' it added. The explosion took place at 10.40pm (4.40am Saturday, Singapore time) on New Year's Eve, it said. The same statue had been badly damaged last week in a blast claimed by Nationalist group Tryzub (Trident) which denounced Stalin as 'the executioner of the Ukrainian people and an international terrorist.'

Read more: http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/World/Story/STIStory_619664.html

[Rhiannon12866]

1. Wow, but I can't say that I'm surprised.

The ghosts of the past, Stalin and Lenin and even the czars, still hang heavy over this part of the world. I visited the USSR and Soviet Georgia (now the Republic of Georgia) in the late '80s, before the USSR fell, as part of a peace group, and emotions still ran pretty high. Resentment towards what they felt was an occupying power was very strong in Georgia and statues of Stalin were everywhere. The way it was explained was that Stalin was Georgian, not Russian, and we were told that the Georgians loved Stalin "because he killed so many Russians." This part of the world has a pretty barbaric history, and the feelings obviously live on... :(

[TheDebbieDee]

24. Thank you for sharing that info.......I had no idea

how or even why the Georgians felt that way about Stalin and the wide-spread destruction that he lavished on the Russian people.

[Rhiannon12866]

36. I didn't, either, until I was fortunate enough to actually visit there.

It was the one place that we visited that was outside of Russia, and not exactly a tourist site. Georgia is very unusual, much more Middle Eastern in character than Russia, remember thinking so at the time, and thus the culture clash. Georgians harbor a huge resentment against the Russians, after being incorporated into the USSR, forced to use the Russian language (everything there was in two languages) and to be beholden to Moscow. Stalin was a brutal dictator, was responsible for countless deaths, and so is a hero to them. I guess they see it as payback, but it was disturbing to learn... :( :hi:

[Dennis Donovan]

2. What took them so long?

:shrug:

[Mudoria]

3. Long overdue really (and they should get any Lenin statues while they're at it)

[Ken Burch]

4. Stalin was never exactly Ukraine's favorite guy

He basically starved half the Ukrainian population to death in the early '30s, after all:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

[David__77]

5. A lot of Ukrainians respect Stalin if that is the case...

Of course, whoever did this did so under cover of night. There are forces who blow up statues of Stalin and praise the Ukrainian SS units, but I think they are a minority. There are still plenty of Ukrainian patriots who served in the Red Army and helped free Europe from fascism.

[Ken Burch]

7. It's possible to be antifascist and STILL be against having your country deliberately starved

I hear what YOU'RE saying, but I don't think you can divide feelings about the Holodomor on a left/right basis(and, as far as that goes, almost nobody on the left of 2011 is comfortable with the idea that Stalin was "one of us".

After all, he sold out the antifascist forces in Spain, killed massive numbers of COMMUNISTS in the purge trials, and basically sucked the life out of the Revolution, leaving only a police state in its place.

[David__77]

9. Well the voters of Ukraine will decide.

It's certainly true that in most of the former Soviet republics, Stalin commands respect from many forces across the political spectrum, including nominal right-wingers. I do not say that Stalin is somehow emblematic of the "left" per se. But it's certainly not something you can just wave your hands at and summarily dismiss if you are, say, a Russian leftist. The only viable opposition party in Russia is pro-Stalin, for instance. And it's not just a question of elderly people who remember life under Stalin and liked it, but there are many younger people with these feelings as well.

[Ken Burch]

12. Yes, the voters will decide

Can you understand, though, how a lot of people who identify as being "Left" might be horrified at the idea that there are people anywhere who see Stalinism as "the good old days"?

It's disturbing that the debate in Russia has seemingly been framed exclusively as "WHICH dictatorship would you prefer to be ruled by?"

The original idea of Marxism was for the workers to have control of the means of production and for the state to "wither away"...not to enshrine the time of the Purge Trials and "four out of every three people are enemies"(as the local tyrant character in the dissident Soviet film "Repentance" puts it).

The whole point of socialism was supposed to be to free people, not just to get them to settle for a COMFORTABLE prison cell.

[social_critic]

21. There's no debate in Russia about communism.

Remember, this stalinesque move was made in the Ukraine by Russian speakers, to make a point. The Ukraine isn't Russia - but it has to remain within Russia's political sphere for Russia to remain viable in the long term. This is understood by Russian speakers, and Washington understood this very well, which is the reason why the US made the first move and tried to pry Ukraine away from Russia. However, the US has been playing the great game with a lot of empty cartridges, and the Russians maneuvered to save their country, which they seem to have done quite well - they are after all great chess players.

In Russia, there's no debate about communism - not in the real spheres of power, or within the professional elites, or even within the working class. They see how it failed, and they don't need theorists to explain to them what Marx had in mind, or would ever believe they should allow anybody to seriously consider communism again. These guys know Marxist theory, they also understand how it failed, and they are smart enough to realize there are much better alternatives. Russian elites decided they couldn't afford to play around with a real democracy because they had to get Russia under tight control to fight back against the USA. In other words, what we see today is in part a result of Russians' psyche and culture, and in part a result of botched US foreign policy.

[Igel]

25. The terminology's perplexing.

Classical liberals are the "left" in much of Eastern Europe--think laissez-faire capitalism and representative democracy--with Communists often being "right." With economics seldom being so extreme and often dissociated from issues of government structure it makes for a zoo. David spoke in purely western terms.

However, the left was firmly pro-Stalin until the KPSS was anti-Stalin. The results of Stalin's pogroms were a sticking point in academia; the GULags were barely discussed; the loss of life from his policies, both military and not, were discounted. Even then, not all of the left dumped Stalin in lockstep, and many of those who did said that Lenin was the good guy (even if he revived the GULags) and it was an issue of personalities--in the great march of progress in which individuals mattered nearly not at all, an exception was made for Stalin because it meant that the great march of progress was still the one true path. Pro-Soviet, or at least non-anti-Soviet views continued well into the '70s. Solzenitsyn was not a favorite on the left for a long time, and went he went all Orthodox many breathed a sigh of relief because he could be labeled a reactionary monarchist and what he said could for political views he held. Even in the '80s a lot on the left and their fellow-travellers were more convinced of the rightness of Brezhnev (and Andropov, etc.) than they were of the US, and were happy to use Reagan as a scapegoat. Humpy was a breath of fresh air because he was more likeable and "left" than the sclerotic Brezhnev and the brief parade of clowns after his death.

It's still the case all too often.

A lot of people who identify as being left (in the Western usage) are properly horrified at the idea that there are any people left on the left who *still* see Stalinism as "the good old days." But if you look at money, at making sure that there's nobody better off than you to offend your sensibilities, at issues of nationalism and self-perceived importance, Stalin's reign wasn't all that bad. Esp. if you're Russian living among the chud', the foreign scum that don't properly appreciate you and the superiority of your race. Or if you consider that you're not all that well off and others--the oligarchs, for instance--are. (It's the same in the West: You make $200 million and you're scum, unless you're approved of. Businessman? Scum. An athlete or a actor or a musician? Way to go! Not all inequality is created equal.)

[Taverner]

29. Stalin was up there with Hitler, Mao, Jackson and Caesar Agustus.

There's more to add to that list, but the term is Authoritarian Dictator.

[fascisthunter]

16. My Family on my Father SIde Was Directly Effected by Him

brothers and sisters lined up and shot in the head. Those strong enough were forced into battle. All of my great grandfather's land was confiscated and plundered. My Grandfather was sent to Siberia to a labor camp, and managed to escape years latter with the help of an old man and a potato wagon. I wish I had known more but PTSD messed the man up to the point where he was frightened to even speak of his past.

[Ken Burch]

38. I'm sure PTSD messed up your grandfather beyond repair

He was probably convinced, to his dying day, that the KGB would show up and drag him right back to the labor camp.

[Taverner]

28. Yep, and then used them as cannon fodder in WWII

[David__77]

6. Terror attacks against a left-wing party.

The CPU is one of the few left-wing parties in Ukraine. It is terrible whenever right-wing gangs launch terrorist attacks against left-wing party headquarters. That is what started the bloodbath of more than 1,000,000 progressives in Indonesia in 1965. Right-wing fascist goons always start their dirty work under cover of night.

[Ken Burch]

8. No party with a statue of Stalin in front of its headquarters can honestly call itself "left-wing"

I don't know that it would have been right-wing groups that did this. It's just as likely that it was just ordinary Ukrainians whose great-grandparents were starved for no reason.

The Soviet state had no excuse for inflicting the Holodomor on Ukraine, and it's disgusting that the CPU would still see Stalin as worthy of being commemorated with a statue. They should have just had a statue of Marx.

[David__77]

10. Why do Ukrainians send the CPU to parliament then?

If they disowned Stalin, they would lose all their remaining support. Did you know that starvation actually wasn't invented by the Bolsheviks, but also existed under czardom?

[Ken Burch]

11. Of course.

And I'm not sure why you think they'd lose their remaining support if they disowned Stalin. Why assume that the only possible way the CPU could win support is by romanticizing the Soviet era? Couldn't they also win votes simply by fighting for a humane socialist alternative to the status quo?

I suppose the most compelling message you can take from the revival of support for Stalinism in what used to be the USSR is that the post-Soviet leaders like Yeltsin, and the Western bankers who manipulated them, managed to do something you wouldn't have thought would be possible: make people LONG for the return of a police state. This, I sadly conclude, is what happens when the powers-that-be insist on coupling the introduction of "democracy" with the imposition of austerity. People won't embrace anything that leaves them without food and without homes.

[social_critic]

14. Russians don't long for a return of communism

The communist party has very little following in Russia, and most people I know wouldn't support a communist regime. Communists tend to be older folk who are upset by change, and who were hurt when pensions began to drop in real terms during the Yeltsin years.

The Stalinists in the Ukraine are a slightly different matter - they happen to be Russian speakers who live in the Ukraine, and they don't like to see Russian power diluted. They don't long for a return of Stalinism, they do long for their lost Russian empire.

Thus, post-Soviet leaders like Yeltsin don't make Russians long for the return of communism. Communism never gains a foothold again once people become free of a communist regime. They do dislike the way Yeltsin handled the conversion away from communism, allowing oligarchs to rip off state property. I talked to several high level Russian politicians about this issue, and they told me Yeltsin feared a return of communism so much, he wanted to entrench a ruling class able to provide the leadership to make sure the communists couldn't do it - don't forget the communists did atempt a coup and there was fighting in Moscow which went as far as tanks firing shells on the building where the communist coup leaders were carrying out their last stand.

Western bankers didn't manipulate Yeltsin or his advisors. They did play along lending money to the Russians they knew was being stolen by the oligarchs. The Russians for the most part ignored advice from Western "experts", and the privatizations they carried out were usually botched, but they did have one effect: they made sure that communism couldn't return.

Today Russia hasn't really made a full transition to a capitalist system, and this is in part due to the external pressure imposed by Clinton when he betrayed understandings the US had with the Russians. The nationalist retrenchment under Putin is in large part due to this betrayal- as the US pursued aggressive policies to destroy Russia first under Clinton and then under Bush, Russian elites realized they had to act fast, centralize control, and unite to respond to the US menace.

[MattSh]

17. So, what Naomi Klein said is all a lie?

You said...

Western bankers didn't manipulate Yeltsin or his advisors. They did play along lending money to the Russians they knew was being stolen by the oligarchs. The Russians for the most part ignored advice from Western "experts", and the privatizations they carried out were usually botched, but they did have one effect: they made sure that communism couldn't return.

Go read the Shock Doctrine. It really should be required reading.

Oh, and the differences between the US capitalist system and the Russian capitalist system are not all that great.

[social_critic]

20. I don't know Naomi Klein, but I lived in Russia at the time

I suppose you would have to tell me about this Naomi Klein, but I used to live in Russia, and I know some of the players involved, and I did talk to a lot of people at the time. I was lucky, I had a fairly large dacha with a large parking area, and I volunteered it for meetings where young Russian professionals and intellectuals would meet to discuss what to do about the end of communism. And I can vouch their main focus was to bury communism and make sure it would never return. And I remain in close touch with my Russian friends, and the signals remain the same - forget communism.

Another interesting point: at the time, they also had a naive belief that US diplomacy would be fair, and would give them the breathing room to chage without having to fear US encroachment on their "sphere of influence". Clinton, however, proceeded to betray their trust, and began a relentless series of moves which they saw as serious threats to Russia's future viability as a nation. Bush, being led by the nose by a neocon faction in Washington, made matters even worse. My analysis leans towards this being a serious miscalculation by Clinton and Bush. Obama has somewhat rectified the US onslaught against Russia, but this has been done only because the Russians re-gained their backbone and made it clear they would do what they had to do to save Russia.

I can also assure you there are huge differences between the capitalist systems in Russia and the USA. So different, they are like volleyball and football - different rules, different players, different audiences, etc.

[Taverner]

32. Is it true that the who's who of Russian Business is more like the Mafia?

Although, in all honesty, Enron bordered on that kind of Mafia Like activity

[Igel]

26. Think critically.

Klein had a domestic agenda and a domestic audience. She wanted to prove a point.

In so doing, she has an all-powerful coterie of people that control nearly everything that powerless commoners the world over must fight. In setting up nice strawmen everywhere. The thing about many strawmen isn't that they don't contain some flesh but that they're exaggerated to the point of falseness to make a point. Then, when they're batted down, it's assumed that the point they were erected to defend is false.

If you have false arguments for a true point, the point is still true. Klein's thesis is hyperbolic. Remove the hyperbole and you have a bunch of facts that she joins by attributing evil intent. You still have the facts even if you stop to question whether the intent ascribed is accurate.

I was once in a church composed of refugees from another church. Once a minister talked to me after a really bad day, where he was roundly criticized not for what he was doing but for what ministers in that other church had done. "You know what our problem was? We wanted to make people perfect. So we had rules and regulations, spies and informants, to help them. We drove them away and made their lives hell with the best of intentions." He hit the nail on the head. 10 years later he had reverted--and watching it happen, they resorted to the same bad practices for the same "good" reasons: They wanted to be their brother's keepers and guardians, and just wound up being guards in the prison they wanted their brethren put into. But to feel really self-righteous, you need to assume people do things for the worst possible reason.

That's the IMF, by and large. Most bureaucracies, in fact, where people have power and only intend it to do good because, well, they know better than the commoners/foreigners/poor/minorities/etc./etc. how to run their lives. Sometimes, in small ways, they do. Usually they're incompetent in running their own lives and wind up doing little more than muck up others' lives on a huge scale, even if takes a decade or generation for the enormity of it all to play out.

Yel'tsyn had his problems. He was sometimes manipulated by Westerners. Sometimes the "manipulation" was just setting terms beneficial to the people with the money, carrots and sticks. Westerners are no more altruistic than "Easterners"--and sometimes he was manipulated by "locals". A lot of the 1990s were because party bosses kept being bosses; with no social capital built up, you spend it all and still get a mediocre society. A lot was because the populace knew no other way. Note that these blame the victim, and properly so: If you say the victim bears responsibility when they do then you're identifying the problem and can fix it. You also treat the victim as a human being with dignity and respect, and not somebody that needs to have their life ordained and run for them by others. In the manipulation, El'tsyn still choose. Sometimes foolishly. Sometimes wisely. (There's little money to be made in publishing in the West by pointing out where he was wise. Russian opinion also says he was a dolt: Then again, most Americans believe that the Obama stimulus was a waste of money.)

By the end of El'tsyn's term the economic and cultural indicators for Russia looked funny. Unemployment, poverty, suicide, all the indicators that show what life is like sucked. Corruption, local and international investment, transparency, all the indicators that show what life is *going* to be like were up. Those that signalled long-term improvement were up the most. Under Putin, they've plummeted. But if you keep the trains running and the streets clean and strike the proper populist stance you've got to be a good guy. Even if you do hold power and all your buddies rake in the billions.

[Taverner]

33. But keep in mind Socialism is far less of a bad word than it is here

They know the West European Model of Socialism works - and Putin, in many ways, has brought that about.

[Taverner]

31. Ethnic Russians, longing for the good old days

There was a quote tossed around where "At least under Stalin we had bread"

[CJvR]

40. A crappy slogan.

Particulary considering the millions who starved to death under Stalin.

[Taverner]

41. I didn't write it, and I assume something is lost in translation

But there's a large ethnically Russian population in Ukraine.

Add to that that most Russians see Ukrainians as Russians, much like the old English view that Scots were Englishmen.

Hard to explain here...

[boppers]

47. Hitler/Mussolini kept the trains running on time, as well.

Considering the amount of starvation and rationing under Stalin, I think it's a bit of dark humor.

[Ken Burch]

50. Obviously, in terms of simple logic, the people who would say that

were NOT the ones who starved.

I think there were areas in the USSR where people had it a lot better than in other areas.

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Ken Burch]

39. Chill, dave. The Antistalinist Left is on the case.

n/t.

[David__77]

44. I think Rosa Luxemburg was infinitely superior to Lenin or Stalin.

People like to infer all sorts of things from lines of argument, inferences that are completely erroneous.

[Ken Burch]

45. Rosa Luxemburg is one of my heroes!

"The abolition of the rule of capital, the realization of a socialist social order – this, and nothing less, is the historical theme of the present revolution. It is a formidable undertaking, and one that will not be accomplished in the blink of an eye just by the issuing of a few decrees from above. Only through the conscious action of the working masses in city and country can it be brought to life, only through the people's highest intellectual maturity and inexhaustible idealism can it be brought safely through all storms and find its way to port."

[David__77]

49. Wonderful...

What I am, I suppose, is a bit of a political pragmatist. Were I in Russia, I wouldn't be too hard on Stalin because I'd recognize that a left-progressive front would have to include several millions of those who look fondly on him. Honestly, I'd avoid the question. And here in this country, I wouldn't call myself a Marxist - that's for sure - for similar reasons of pragmatism. We'll get no Luxemburgist mass strike through senseless alienation.

[davidinalameda]

46. okay

:toast:

[Taverner]

42. Not defending Communists., Defending STALIN

Granted, yeah Stalin was a Communist. Boo, hiss.

But more offensive is that he was a butcher. Killed millions.

Whether it was through his programs that lead to starvation, or it was done by the KGB, looking for traitors.

[Ken Burch]

48. I'm not sure I'm willing to accept that Stalin was, in the truest sense, a Communist at all

In practice, he was a Great Russian Nationalist(which is weird, given that he wasn't Russian)who managed to use the structure of the CPSU to take power and rule as a despot.

Stalin even had the gall to codify his whole bloody, cynical, conspiratorial approach to politics as an "ism"-that's what the term "Marxism-Leninism" means(And no, Lenin wasn't a saint, he'd have lost me when he crushed the Krondstadt uprising, an uprising that was guilty of nothing but resisting the slide into tyranny that was already afflicting the Revolution, but Lenin was too modest to ever want his notion of the "vanguard" party to be used as the basis for an "ism" that was named for him).

There is still great need for a radical transformation of life on egalitarian and socialist lines...but the methods of Stalin can never lead us to this transformation and must be resisted by all true leftists, and resisted WITHOUT making the mistake of joining forces with those who want a capitalist world.

[David__77]

43. Who's "defending" Stalin?

There were crimes committed by czars, including famine, etc. A bust of Stalin is kind of like a bust of a czar. Historical figures... Plenty of people in the former Soviet republics venerate historical leaders for various reasons. Stalin is hardly a paragon of progressive virtue, please...

[Taverner]

30. I would hardly call Stalin Left Wing

You could make a case for Lenin, Trotsky, Khruschev and all the rest...but Stalin and Beria were paranoid psychopaths with power.

[David__77]

34. There's a compelling case to be made the Beria was a closet liberal.

It seems counterintuitive, but he did have quite the "reform program" on his back burner, and immediately after Stalin's death, made many "de-Stalinization" moves until he was executed. He would have been well-positioned to murder Stalin, actually.

[Kolesar]

13. Russian communists believed that Stalin betrayed the Revolution

After Stalin died, Solzhenitsyn's books that were critical of the gulag state were allowed to be published. Such freedom did not last, but it demonstrated that the Soviet people were dedicated to Lenin and Marx, not Stalin.

[Igel]

27. The Party did what the Party had to.

It was becoming clear that Stalin was bad, in many ways. Engage in samokritika and all would be forgiven (and, when it was the Party who did, so, that was followed by an "or else.")

Solzehnitsyn's books critical of the GULags weren't published. Stories that Russians in the know knew had to have the GULags as background were published. _Ivan Denisovich_ was published, but that had a lot of subtexts. It allowed the entire mess to be placed on Stalin's and the guard's shoulders. And it blunted talked of what was happening in society: As a lot of the prisoners that were in the GULags were rehabilitated it was harder to keep silent about them *and* there was the risk of fearing them because they were still under suspicion.

Such "freedom" required the approval of the censor, the Central Committee, and the personal approve of the Chairman of the Soviet Union. It helped contain the problem. The problem, a few years later, was again denied. There was a thaw; it was systemic, although resisted by many. But it didn't extend that far, not by any means, and was mostly confined to thick journals and the fringe.

Lenin closed the tsarist prison camps. He closed the most notorious of them all, in Kolyma. That's often cited.

Lenin reopened the prison cames as state "corrective labor" camps, and they were probably larger when he died than at any point after 1900 under the tsars. He re-opened Kolyma not because the conditions there provided labor that was more corrective but because the gems and precious metals were good for the state budget, a good place for murderers to be sent to make a quick profit for the state and then die, a two-fer. Quickly Lenin realized that political enemies could also be sent there for the same purposes. Stalin ended many of Lenin's lenient policies and that allows the fiction that Lenin's leniency was because he was kind and compassionate. He only introduced lenient policies because he was pragmatic: As leniency became inexpedient it was harmful. He was all for deceit and lies, using and manipulating people if it got him his goal: A monolithic, all powerful state was necessary to herd the sheep to his bright future and, dammit, he was the Good Shepherd and jealous of his power.

With Stalin's death they *had* to separate out Lenin as the good guy. You can't have *all* your leaders being scumsucking tyrants and claim to be progressive and democratic. Stalin, defender of the Revolution, was covered with shit; if any spattered onto the Revolution it meant Communists would be covered with shit. Saying Stalin was covered with shit gave them time to give the Revolution a quick rinse. Lenin had a hagiography that had been united with Stalin's; Lenin's hagiography was revived, given a more "scientific basis" (meaning "this is what we need it to be now"), his halo was polished and he had Stalin surgically excised from his body politic and, a few years later, Brezhnev was implanted. This reburnished hagiography was rediscovered by Gorbachev when the "zastoi" was judged to be entirely because of the Brezhnev implant.

Russian communists believed in the Revolution, which kept changing after the fact; that Stalin was an inconvenience to their authority to be the True Guides of society while enriching themselves (as True Guides so richly deserved) could not be overlooked. So all the adulation they gave Stalin ceased to be. Then Khrushchov betrayed the Revolution. Then Brezhnev. Then Andropov and Chernenko. A lot believe Gorbachev betrayed the Revolution. A lot of them became Russian mafia, keeping the part of the Revolution that was expedient.

[David__77]

35. Actually, Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin was a strategic blunder...

...IF his goal was to shore up the political position of the Soviet Union. I'm speaking form a neutral perspective of political strategy... He would have done better to take the line that Stalin made grave errors but was basically good, like the Chinese do with Mao presently. It's less destabilizating and provides less space to question the overall social system. I think the Hungarian and Polish events of 1956 would not have happened were it not for Khrushchev's ham-handed politics and purging of Stalinists in eastern Europe during that year.

In 1953, when Stalin died, pretty much the entire global left, with the exception of right social democrats, paid tribute to him. Not just communists. The Soviets could easily have leveraged that and tried to tidy things up. Like the North Koreans with regard to the Kims today, the Soviet people in their majority genuinely did love Stalin when he died, although often with mixed emotion. When Stalin died, there was spontaneous mourning in the gulags actually.

[Kolesar]

51. Yes, that sounds right...eom

[fascisthunter]

15. Stalin was a psycho

[Odin2005]

18. Good, Stalin starved millions of Ukranians because he hated well-off peasants,.

Called them "blood-sucking Kulaks". :eyes:

[SoapBox]

19. Funny how those that get rid of monuments to terrorists, are labeled as terrorists.

...the guy was a monster...good bye and good riddance to the statue.

Speaking of...I wanted to gag when they trotted out the Reagan float
in the Rose Parade today. Funny how they didn't have any warm and fuzzy
images of him running the "bus" of the economy into the ditch...or about
Iran-Contra...or how he never would say AIDS...or...and it goes
on and on.

More of the RushThugs re-writing history.

[AnnieBW]

22. Good for them!

Violence is never the answer, but in Stalin's case, I'll make an exception.

[harvey007]

23. Hurray for the "extremists"

This news report called the Stalin statue destroyers "evil-doers."

http://en.rian.ru/world/20110101/162016052.html

[raccoon]

52. At last, some good news. nt